Saddle catchment vegetation cover for Distributed Hydrology Soil Vegetation Model (DHSVM), 2 meter, 2019

The Saddle Catchment of the Niwot Ridge LTER is subject to observed and modeled hydrologic connectivity and nuances that is influenced by the variable vegetation across the area. This file was specifically intended to update the Distributed Hydrology Soil Vegetation Model (DHSVM) input file used to simulate vegetation within the Saddle Catchment, as an ongoing method for evaluating modeled hydrologic connectivity. Thus, high resolution vegetation information was used from existing National Ecological Observatory Network (NEON) datasets. NEON has developed a suite of vegetation datasets including a 1m spatial resolution Airborne Observation Platform (AOP) Total Biomass data product. This product is an orthorectified (UTM projection) raster product derived from NEON AOP Imaging Spectrometer (NIS) reflectance data (DP3.30016.001). This vegetation layer was chosen because it visually reflected the differences in vegetation across the Saddle Catchment at a much higher resolution than previous DHSVM vegetation files. Using this gridded biomass product, different vegetation types were manually assigned and translated into to DHSVM vegetation types/codes. The assigning and translating of vegetation types was done by consulting NWT LTER individuals who specialize in the vegetative and soil properties within the Saddle Catchment and using available point-vegetation data from the Saddle Catchment sensor node network. The final product was upscaled to a 2m resolution using R (to match all other DHSVM input files).